After eight days in the field we were called over to one of the brigade’s command vehicles to take a phone call from the boss. He started out by asking what we think of the Israeli troops and their capacity to fight. I tried to speak quietly so the two Israelis sitting next to me with their headsets on couldn’t hear.
“They’re good, General. Really good. I hate to admit it but Harry and I think this is the best brigade we’ve ever seen in terms of being ready to fight. Better than any of ours for sure. They’ve been together for a long time and it really shows. And they’ve got better tanks and communications gear than we have. And, sir, everything’s well maintained and the men are highly motivated and well trained. General, no bullshit—these guys are ready to kick ass and take names.”
“Yes sir, that’s correct. It’s sky high. There’s no doubt about it—they think they can defeat any conventional attack even if it involves all the Arab armies at once including the Syrians, Iraqis, and Egyptians. If the other Israeli brigades are even half as good as this one, they’re probably right.” Why did he ask me that?
“Yes sir, that’s true. But here’s the thing sir. The officers think they’ll lose a lot of people in order to win a really big conventional war. Almost every one of the Israeli officers we’ve talked to, just about every single one of them, is not willing to lose men to spare the Arabs from nuclear devastation. They think Israel may have to go nuclear the next time it is threatened with a massive ground attack.
“No sir, it doesn’t seem to bother them. The men we’ve talked to really believe Israel’s going to use nukes next time and they’re cool with it. The officers we’ve been talking to would rather nuke the Arabs to hell and back rather than lose any of their men.”
“Yes sir, they are. And they’re seriously training for nuclear and gas attacks. A couple of nights ago Harry and I watched the brigade we’re visiting, General Makow’s Tenth, button up and practice a fast dispersal response to a potential nuclear attack.”
“Yes sir. They sure did. It was damn impressive.”
******
Harry and I are now in our third week with General Makow’s Tenth Brigade. At the moment I’m with Simon visiting the APC that is the mobile headquarters of a tank battalion equipped with some of the ugliest and most vicious looking tanks I’ve ever seen. Harry and Solly are off driving around in one of our old jeeps to visit the battalion’s line companies.
I was just starting to ask about the ugly tanks when, suddenly, everyone stopped talking and stared at the portable radio that had been playing music in the corner of the armored command vehicle. An announcer is obviously reading a news bulletin. I can’t understand a word of it but I can tell from the suddenly tense looks on the faces around me that whatever it is they are hearing is not good news.
“What’s up?” I asked Simon as soon as the announcer stopped and the Israelis all started talking at once.
“Bad news. Iraq and Iran have just announced that they and their militias have agreed to a ceasefire. They say they’re going to make peace and combine their armies to fight Israel. Assad of Syria seems to have brokered the deal. If it’s true, it probably means Syria will be involved too.”
****** General Christopher Roberts
Everyone was somber and leaning forward when the President came into the Situation Room and opened the hastily called Security Council meeting. It was being held to get him updated on the rapidly evolving situation in the Middle East.
The President began by addressing the group around the table—but he was looking straight at me with a question in his voice as he spoke.
“I know the current war between the Sunnis and Shia is stalemated and so it isn’t much of a surprise that both sides want to end it. My God, in some places it’s a throwback to World War One with trench warfare and huge and totally meaningless attacks and casualties and suicide bombers. Any ending of such a meaningless war is good news. But ending the war in order to unite and attack Israel is something else. Is it a real threat or just the best excuse they could come up with to end the war?”
“You’re right about that Mr. President,” I responded. “About the need of all the different sides to end the war, I mean. But the bad news is Syria’s latest president from the Assad family appears to be the one who came up with the idea and brokered the peace. If they mean what they say, and that’s a really big if, Mr. President, it almost certainly means Syria has agreed to join the Coalition Army and give it safe passage through Syria to attack Israel.”
Then I paused and looked around the room before I said, “The real question, of course, is the one you just asked, Mr. President,—whether this is a serious coalition that will lead to a big war against Israel or just a face saving excuse to end a meaningless war that is bleeding both the Shia and the Sunnis to death.”
“Yeah," the CIA Director, added as he leaned forward again and waved his hand for emphasis. “And who else will they bring in with them? The Egyptians are certain to be pressured to join the coalition if it actually attacks Israel in force—even if the Egyptian government doesn’t want to get involved. As I’m sure you might remember, Mr. President, back in ’67 the Egyptians and Syrians got Jordan’s King Hussein to join their war by telling him they were winning and suggesting his people would throw him out when they did. If they are really serious, it’s a good bet that this time the Arabs will run to the Egyptians with the same argument and same threats; Jordan and Lebanon too, for that matter.”
Iranians aren’t Arabs but this is no time to quibble.
“Okay,” the President responded. “That’s the bad news. The question is when, if ever, will this new coalition actually attack Israel and, if they really mean it and do attack, what should we do about it? Can we head it off?”
“Well,” I said as I popped the top on a can of Diet Pepsi I’d taken off the buffet counter as I walked in, “if that’s the bad news, the good news is it’s going to take them time to get organized. Maybe we can do something to head them off.”
And the big question is how will the Israelis react to the threat let alone to an actual attack?
“And the biggest question of all, of course, is how will the Israelis react to this announcement and, if they do, when?”
****** The Cabinet’s decision
Everyone in the basement conference room continued to stand around and talk quietly with each other after the decision was made to proceed. They couldn’t seem to bring themselves to leave. It was almost as if they are waiting for someone to ask for a new vote or suddenly think of an alternative. To a man they are visibly anxious, and probably rightly so.
The timing for the operation is perfect and the vote was unanimous, but every one of them is worried about whether he’d made the right decision when he voted in favor of adopting the army’s plan. Not that any of them had much of a choice, not if he wanted to keep his position and all the perks and benefits that come with it.
******
Word of the decision reached the two dozen or so men working in the big hangar almost immediately. There were muted cheers and a couple of low voices muttered “about time” when their elderly white haired leader came out of one of the two communications vans in the hangar to tell them their first mission is a go. They are, he told them, to get one of the old DC-6s they found in Lagos ready to fly in time for a takeoff at 0312 hours tomorrow night. He didn’t tell them that it will be going first because it will have the longest distance to fly and has the greatest range. They don’t need to know.
“I’ll go with the one we got from Nigeria; it looks more dependable.”
It isn’t that the men in the big hangar were cheering because they agree with the operation; they were cheering because they are bored to tears and want to go home to their wives and families after spending weeks cooped up in a hot and dirty hangar eating field rations and sharing a single smelly chemical toilet. They also cheered because they are pretty sure they are doing something important even if they don’t know what it is. They
share, it seems, a burning dedication to defend their country and religion.
What the white-haired man didn’t tell his men is if they can’t get the DC-6 ready in time for a 0312 departure tomorrow night, they are to get it ready for a 0312 departure the next night.
The plane’s departure time is important. No matter what day it takes off, the orders specify it can never be allowed to be seen coming out of Somalia by an overflying plane or satellite. That means it can’t even be taken out of the hangar and gassed up until it’s totally dark; and it’s got to be wheels up no later than 0342 so it can fly for several hours in the darkness without being seen and stay aloft until it reaches its target tomorrow night after it’s dark again. If the men in the hangar can’t make those timelines the plane is to go back in the hangar before the sun comes up and try again the next night—and keep trying until they can get if off with a chance of success.
Everyone in the hangar quickly turned to the job at hand with renewed enthusiasm, encouraged by the possibility that they might finally be able to leave this godforsaken place. About half of them are fit and heavily armed when they take their turns standing guard; the rest vary greatly from jaunty pilots to technicians who look like the bookish intellectuals they are.
The appearance of the men is revealing. The men in the first group look like the fit and determined elite soldiers they are despite the ragged and dirty civilian clothes they are wearing in an effort to fool anyone who might look at them from a distance. They’re charged with guarding the hangar and everything in it including the men in the second group; the men in the second group are primarily engineers and pilots charged with preparing the planes for their missions and seeing to it that they reach their targets.
In fact, they’ve all been working together to modify the planes and they will all pick up weapons and fight if necessary. And the guards do a lot more than just pull guard duty—it takes a lot of dexterity and smarts to hoist big pieces of equipment, fuel tanks, and numerous twenty-kilo packs of high explosives into an airplane and install them.
First to go, the white haired man had immediately understood, once he’d been given the initial target, will be one of the ancient cargo DC-6s, probably the one from Nigeria. It will go first, he decided, because it looks to be the most dependable of his two DC-6s and because its engine modifications and many additional gas tanks will give it the greatest range and time aloft.
The plan for the mission sounds simple but is actually quite complex: the pilots in the remote control van will use the plane’s newly installed instruments and remote controls to fly it very low, and hopefully undetected, until it is well past northern Ethiopia and out over the ocean. If everything goes as planned the Indonesian DC-6 will never gain enough altitude to be spotted on anyone’s radar until it is only a few miles from its destination. Then it will be too late.
Only one thing surprised the older man—the target. He’d expected one of the others to be first. He wondered why it was the first target.
Activity in the two hangars had always been intense but now it really picked up. The pilots immediately stepped up their practicing on the remote flight controls that had been pre-installed in the two vans before the vans had been flown into Somalia on a dark night a couple of months ago; the electronic techs decided on their own to strip down and rebuild one of the control consoles; and the aircraft mechanics once again checked the tire pressures and the oil and hydraulic fluid levels of the DC-6’s controls and engines.
I hope I haven’t made a mistake by using the plane from Lagos. The number three inboard engine is still dripping oil and so far we haven’t been able to figure out why it is leaking, let alone how to stop it. It’s obviously a slow leak so, hopefully, if the mechanics top it off just before the flight, the plane will get to its destination long before the oil in number three runs out and the engine seizes up and it has to be feathered.
Being ultra careful is the order of the day and every man instinctively knows it without being told. We’ve come this far; this is no time to make a mistake and fuck things up. The fear of something going wrong was on everyone’s mind and explained why the Lago’s DC-6’s fuel tanks will not be filled until the last moment after the contact detonators had been carefully installed in its huge explosive package.
Only then, under cover of darkness, and with the guards moving their perimeter further out to insure no one out in the desert is close enough to see what is going on, will the plane be pulled out through the hangar’s battered metal doors. Then one of the Syrian fuel trucks with its load of aviation gas will be pushed around by hand to the open area in front of the hangar to fuel it.
Until they are needed the fuel trucks and their highly flammable cargo will remain well away from the hangar and always heavily guarded. Only at the last moment will the men pull one of the fuel trucks around from behind the hangar and out to the plane which will be parked quite a distance away from the hangar – just in case it blows.
Presently the fuel trucks are out back under the rusty tin roof of the hastily repaired old plywood cattle shed where they can’t be seen by the prying eyes of spy planes, surveillance satellites, and curious local tribesmen. The truck with the DC-6’s gas and the other two big fuel trucks, all with Syrian markings and Syrian license plates, had been flown in on some of our first nighttime supply flights. They’ve been carefully hidden and zealously guarded ever since.
Why are we being so careful? – Well, one reason is because fuel is in short supply in Somalia, particularly gasoline. There would have almost certainly been an effort to steal the trucks and their gas if the local clan chief or the bandits that pass as the Somali army had known of their existence. The theft wouldn’t succeed, of course. But the resulting uproar, missing men, and bodies to bury would most likely blow our cover.
******
Many things were happening as the men in the dilapidated hangar began preparing the Lagos DC-6 for tomorrow night’s launch.
For one, the President of Syria was seeing the first of his distinguished guests off at the airport. The Iranian President, after a brief delay occasioned by his demand for a more suitable limousine, was headed to Tehran with a brief stop in Cairo to meet with Egyptian President; the President of Iraq will leave three hours later for Bagdad. He too will fly via Cairo for a brief visit with the Egyptian President.
The generals who accompanied the two visiting Presidents to the meeting are remaining behind to continue working with the Syrian generals. There is still work to be done on the organization of the new military coalition and refining the detailed plans that have been developed for its coming campaign.
President Assad himself will fly to Cairo in the morning for, he hopes, a carefully organized triumphant reception with lots of media coverage. It will be one of his few trips abroad since he took over from his cousin some years ago as part of the deal which temporarily ended the fighting between the Sunnis and Shiites that caused all the refugees. At the moment Assad is still waiting anxiously for a call from Cairo confirming he will be properly welcomed with the Egyptians arranging for a large and appropriate spontaneous demonstration of support, meaning, of course, it will be large enough to impress everyone when it is televised live throughout the Islamic world.
The agreement the three Islamic presidents signed this morning is quite extensive and runs to over two thousand pages. Even so, there are numerous important details still to be worked out. Not the least of which is the most important in the eyes of each of them—who will be the commander of the Islamic Coalition’s military forces and implement its extremely detailed invasion plan. It had to be extremely detailed to get everyone on board. That’s why the sectarian fighting lasted so long and the agreement has so many pages.
The three leaders agreed the position of Supreme Commander should be offered to an Egyptian general—if Egypt joins the coalition and participates in the invasion by opening an “Egyptian Front.”
Initially, in what even the Israeli military considered to
be a shrewd move, the three presidents had agreed the deputy commander, who would become the Supreme Commander if the Egyptians don’t sign on, would be from whichever country contributes the most troops and equipment to the Islamic Army’s invasion force.
Naming the deputy commander based on his country’s “contribution” turned out to be a great idea in that each of the countries committed almost all their available troops. The problem, of course, was deciding which troops and equipment should be counted and who was to do the counting. For example, is a thousand man militia or an old jet fighter the equivalent of three tanks or one infantry company?
It proved to be an unsolvable problem. Until this morning each of the presidents offered everything he had and claimed to be supplying more troops and equipment for the invasion than either of the other two. He did so, of course, so he could name the commander of the invasion force if the Egyptians did not participate and, perhaps, even take the job for himself once victory was certain.
Finally, with the scheduled start of the invasion rapidly approaching and having convinced themselves the Egyptians were likely to come on board, the three presidents agreed that if the Egyptians don’t participate they will each appoint a "Supreme General"—and the extremely detailed invasion plan will be rigorously implemented without deviation unless all three of the Supremes agree to a change. That, of course, means all three of the presidents will have to agree on every new decision that is made.
What wasn’t decided, or even hinted at in this morning’s discussions, was the most important question of all—who will become the leader of the Middle East and call the shots in the region after the Israelis are destroyed. Up until now the nominal leadership of the region’s Islamic countries had been more or less shared between the Egyptians, because there are so many of them, and the lazy and insufferable Saudis because they control Mecca and have the most oil and money.
Israel's Next War Page 7
